Representatives of the Office of the Government, all Ministries and major energy companies of Lithuania train at strategic table-top exercise Cyber Shield STRATEX 2023 on May 11. The exercise is designed to test their ability to properly respond to a large-scale cyber incident.
“Cyber-attacks become a fact of daily life. We were all able to see how Russia employed cyberspace in the war against Ukraine for both, cyber and hybrid attacks. Those can cause massive effects paralyzing the work of institutions and disrupting the entire country. We understand the threats, thus we are strengthening cybersecurity in a comprehensive way. I would like to point two overriding factors:
First, cybersecurity is the responsibility of the top management of the agency or company. Leadership is in charge of all things safety in cyberspace, this responsibility cannot be simply delegated to the IT department or a safety officer. Second, we know that an organization cannot withstand a mass cyberattack individually. It takes a mutual coordinated action which does not come from reading textbooks. Therefore, such practice in action is critical for building readiness,” Chancellor of the Government Giedrė Balčytytė underscores the importance of the exercise.
Cyber Shield STRATEX 2023 follows a fictitious but realistic scenario to allow exercise participants to refer to the legislation and emergency management plans in force as they train according to scenario plot lines and test various possible methods of response, forms of information exchange, and discuss relevant crisis management aspects.
“The main aim of the exercise is to assemble strategic level decision-makers and to test their interoperability procedures and resource distribution in the event of a large-scale cyber-attack against one of the strategic sectors of our country allegedly resulting in disruption of a part of critical services,” says Director of the National Cyber Security Centre under the MoD Liudas Ališauskas.
Table-top exercise Cyber Shield STRATEX 2023 is held by the National Cyber Security Centre under the MoD, National Crisis Management Centre of the Office of the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, and United States Pennsylvania National Guard which provides chief moderators of the exercise.
Info and photo credit: Government of the Republic of Lithuania
